


all the lost boys

by feralphoenix



Category: Blaze Union
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Gen, Pre-Canon, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 11:04:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At age fifteen, Siskier has an epiphany of sorts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the lost boys

**Author's Note:**

> _(What brought us to this_ – I am tired of merely floating)
> 
>  
> 
>  **content warning:** this story involves references to past sexual abuse  & lots of talk about really ugly class discrimination

“I’ve been thinking this for a while, but—”

Garlot looked up from the straw-stuffed pallet, but Siskier was in one of the dark corners of the chapel, hidden by someone’s old bedsheet that they’d repurposed as a sort of modesty curtain. Privately, he’d never seen the point of the thing—he and she had been naked around each other plenty when they’d been kids, and after how long he’d lived with her and Jenon he was more than comfortable skinning down to nothing around either of them—but Jenon seemed to agree that it was a good idea and it made Siskier more comfortable, so he didn’t say so out loud.

Unable to look at Siskier anyway, Garlot lay back and stretched out, staring absently at the broken ceiling and the stars beyond it. Tonight was a clear night, and it was warm. He was grateful not to have to skitter up to the ceiling to stretch a tarp to cover it. The chapel itself was ancient and falling down, untended to since the people of Nether all went to the little Meria church instead; what had been its pews were now heaps of so much rotten wood, and its stained glass windows were smashed in places and bleached white from decades of sun, covered from the inside by other salvaged sheets. It was terrifying work, running up to cover the ceiling—you never knew if the fragile old wood could hold your weight properly, and they didn’t have the means to treat a broken limb from a collapse. The holes in the ceiling that already existed were too big to be able to catch rainwater in a bucket underneath them.

And besides, Garlot was already exhausted. His muscles all hurt from practice-fighting with Jenon, and from their recent venture into Nievel to steal back money and goods for their neighbors, and from it being his turn to fill in the old latrines and dig new ones. He was not up for climbing to the roof by any stretch of the imagination, but Jenon was bigger and heavier and clumsier and couldn’t do it anymore, and Siskier (who anyway didn’t like heights) was busy doing whatever she was doing.

He missed being able to spend the night in the real church, but the ladies who always stayed up to let them inside had been carried away by nobles and sold, all their goods taken away for money. Jenon had read the edicts to them—the charges had involved unpaid loans—but Garlot and Siskier had both been worried that the real reason for the arrests had been the ladies’ involvement with them. They hadn’t been stealing for long, but they’d had skirmishes with nobles’ hireling soldiers before and some of the rich knew their descriptions.

So at least this place was a roof over their heads and a place to sleep where no one would really bother them. Garlot sighed. He was glad Jenon was with them now, but finding food and boarding for three growing kids instead of two, and one of them less well-known by their fellow poor, was a lot more difficult. Today’s stewed cabbage and potatoes had been very lean, and they’d all been too tired to go hunting. Hopefully they would feel better after a night’s sleep.

“Dresses are awful for really running around in, aren’t they? All that loose fabric, I mean, it catches on everything—”

“Like the window, that time,” Garlot supplied. If they hadn’t been able to get the torn scrap of cloth out from where it had been stuck, they might have been in trouble. That merchant’s coffers were just fat enough to pay for fancy mage work to determine whose clothes that had come from.

“Yeah. And, well, they’re not much protection against—people looking, or if somebody tried to grab you.”

“That’s certainly true,” Jenon said in a light tone of voice from where he sat in the only chair, feet up on what had once been the pulpit. “The sheer number of times I’ve seen your underpants over the past few months—I’ve stopped counting.”

Either Jenon was talking with his dick—Garlot wouldn’t put that past him, for all Jenon had seen and lived through since running away from home to join them—or he was trying not to address that other part of what Siskier was saying, the part that made Garlot want to throw up or cry because he’d give anything, die a hundred thousand horrible deaths, to prevent Siskier ever looking like he used to look like, feeling dirty in her skin like him.

Whichever, it wasn’t a smart remark to make, because Siskier poked her head around the curtain to glare at him and said, “Keep that up and I am going to shoot you in the face.”

Jenon held his hands up in a gesture of surrender and fell silent. Siskier returned to the corner.

“But pants—” She paused. There was a ripping noise. “Pants are, well maybe it’s different if you’re rich and you can afford nice fabrics—” More ripping, and Siskier paused again to sigh longingly. “But when you get new ones they’re so stiff, they’re hard to do anything in. And you have to wear ‘em and wear ‘em and wear ‘em and once you have the stupid things broken in enough that you could—could tie yourself in a knot if you wanted to—that’s the point where they’re going to fall apart in another few weeks.”

This was punctuated with another rip. Siskier came out from behind the curtain a few moments later.

She’d torn the legs, or most of them, off of a pair of pants and was wearing them like that. Garlot watched from where he lay, looking at the light from the fire play off the pale hairs on her shins and her paler skin as she paced the center aisle as if to get used to the feeling.

On Garlot’s other side, Jenon made a weird, strangled-sounding noise.

“What’s _your_ problem?” Siskier said hotly.

“Well,” Jenon said. “It’s kind of—a lot of skin to show, isn’t it?”

“I don’t care as long as it’s not cold,” Siskier said. “At least this way I can _move.”_   She did a handspring as though demonstrating.

“Garlot, she can’t wear that. Tell her she can’t wear that.”

“Why are you dragging _me_ into this?” Garlot demanded, casting a baleful eye on his friend. “Look, what she wears is up to her. If Siskier’s okay with it and she thinks it’s safe—”

“It’s not just, like—for modesty’s sake. It’ll be easier to get hurt that way too.”

“If I can move more easily I’m not gonna get caught on stuff and fall on my face,” Siskier argued. “If you’re talking about, like, actual fights? I snipe people from a distance, remember? Besides, it’s not like we could ever afford armor to begin with.”

“Jenon, it’s really not up to you,” Garlot said. “And I want to sleep. If you’re going to argue, could you do it someplace else?”

Even though Jenon was still glowering at him, Garlot closed his eyes like he trusted them to leave it at that. Jenon made one more noise of disgust, and if Siskier made any form of retaliation, it was silent.

Jenon still seemed displeased about Siskier’s wardrobe for quite a while after that, but even in the future—even in the days when they had access to nice clothes and could buy proper armor, Siskier made it a point to never wear long pants except in cold weather.


End file.
